All posts tagged "Asia"

There may be a lot of fears around the potential for Google Glass to be used unethically (in fact, Google recently published a guide on how not be a "Glasshole"), but there's no doubt that the technology holds serious promise if used meaningfully.
For one of the best examples of how Glass could be used to tell amazing stories in an impactful way, take a look at the work filmmaker Josh Kim is doing with his Google Glass Diaries project.
The first person video diary project aims to tell the stories of people whose stories don't usually get told ranging...

It is undeniable that Asia is one of the most important centers of technology growth for the next decade. It’s the key for Facebook’s continued growth. It’s where the majority of web data is being produced. And it’s home to China, where some of the biggest multi-billion dollar tech companies the world has ever seen reside. But Asia is not alone in watching Silicon Valley, the Mecca of the tech world. The Valley dominates and leads everyone forward into the next century of technological innovation. We all have Valley-envy.
And despite the fact that Asia is coming into its own...

Smart car service Uber is spreading rapidly throughout Asia and around the world, and as it attempts to conquer new markets, it must ramp up its marketing to attract attention.
But in this day and age of constant distraction, in which consumers are unceasingly bombarded with calls to action from any number of consumer tech brands, what can a startup do to ensure it gets noticed?
We should all know the answer by now. Puppies.
Today, Uber Taipei launched a promotion in which users aching for some puppy love could call for a vehicle using their app, that would deliver puppies on-demand...

Thailand has been known to be a huge feature phone market, just like Indonesia. However, a release published by GfK Retail and Technology Asia proved that the Southeast Asian country with some 69 million people is getting increasingly tech-savvy. The report reveals that in the first quarter of 2013, a total of 2.87 million smartphones were sold in Thailand.
According to the survey results, “two in every five mobile handsets sold was a smartphone.” Not only has sales doubled from one in every five handsets two years back, findings also stated that it all started in early-2012. Apparently, consumers in...

Africa has led the world in mobile payments from the very start. A lack of wired infrastructure and large numbers of unbanked people with access to mobile phones meant that it was a natural fit. The likes of M-Pesa and Fundamo became household names, processing billions of dollars in transactions every year. But all that is about to change.
Africa is losing its edge in the mobile money game, with the Asia/Pacific region set to steal top spot from it by 2016. According to tech research company Gartner, it will be the largest contributor to the US$235.4-billion in mobile...

People in the tiny Asian nation of Macau love Facebook. No seriously, around 90% of them check the social network on their phone at least once a month.
That's according to the latest State of Mobile report from mobile web browser Opera Mini. This particular report focuses on social media and Macau's addiction to Facebook isn't the only surprising finding.
Estonia for instance isn't exactly picky when it comes to the social networks it frequents. The tech-savvy Eastern European country has a high representation of both Facebook and Twitter, as well as more regional networks such as Odnoklassniki and...

While the smartphone revolution is well established in most mature mobile markets, there’s still a long way to go in some countries, particularly in some Asian regions where the transition from feature phones is not moving as quickly.
But a new partnership between Google and Globe Telecom in the Philippines promises to bring a number of Google’s internet services – namely Gmail, Google search, and Google Plus – to feature phone users in...

Be more wolf-like. That’s one of the rallying cries of Robin Li, CEO and founder of China’s top search engine, Baidu, in an internal email to all employees that was sent out yesterday. The morale-boosting email was leaked out to Techweb, giving an interesting glimpse into one of China’s top web companies at a time when it’s facing new competition in its core business.
In the email, which was headlined “Change Starts With You and Me,” Robin Li calls on Baidu employees to think like wolves, to increase investment in innovation, and new businesses, and to be “willing to disrupt ourselves.” Outlining...

The cloud isn't a weird abstract concept any more, it hasn't been for a while now actually. Global cloud traffic is growing massively, especially in emerging market regions like Africa and the Middle East.
According to networking specialist Cisco, global data centre traffic will grow four-fold and reach a total of 6.6 zettabytes annually by 2016.
For a bit of context, that's 92 trillion hours of streaming music, 16-trillion hours of business web conferencing, or seven-trillion hours of online high-definition (HD) video streaming
It reckons that Africa and the Middle East will lead the way with 79% annual growth...

You may have heard that China has the world's largest mobile phone user base (at just over a billion) or that social media platforms like Sina Weibo have more than 300-million users. When it comes to Asia, you're almost always talking numbers with lots of zeros. But what numbers are these, exactly?
If you take a flip through the masses of stats compiled by digital agency WeAreSocial, you may feel like the term 'million' has lost its potency. There are now over three-billion mobile phone users in Asia (around one in five people have a smartphone), and 12...

The global mobile market might be slowing down, but business is booming in South East Asia.
Smartphone sales grew by 78% across the region, while overall mobile sales grew by 24%. In the last 12 months some 115-million phones have been sold in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines at a total value of US$13.7-billion. That's according to the latest stats from GfK.
Although feature phones continue to dominate across the...

This is big. Android has overtaken BlackBerry as the top OS in Indonesia, one of the Canadian manufacturer's biggest markets.
According to the latest stats from tech research company IDC, Google's little green robot is now standard on 52% of smartphones in the country.
That said, BlackBerry is still the most popular overall device in the country, but only because so many different smartphone manufacturers run Android.
According to IDC Indonesia market...

Campaign Asia-Pacific and Nielsen have just published the 2012 Asia’s Top Brands report -- a list of the most popular brands in Asia based on a survey of 4 800 consumers across the continent. This year’s report has seen Apple climb to the number two spot for the first time -- although it is still behind competitor Samsung, which has taken the top spot from Sony. Sony has now dropped down to third place, followed by Nestlé in fourth and Panasonic in fifth. Apart from Nestlé, the top five spots are all held by electronics firms.
This is the third...

This is beyond cool. It's a new form of webcam to animated avatar technology, courtesy of Yasue Mitsukura and the good people at Keio University in Japan.
The system uses an ordinary webcam to track minute changes in the user's face, which are then mirrored in detail by an animated avatar.
According to Mitsukura (via Diginfo) the system is actually superior to kind of motion capture technology used by big film and gaming...

Pakistan has restored access to Twitter in the country after blocking it over the weekend, saying that it would turn to Interpol for help with screening sensitive content.
Somewhat ironically, the country's interior minister took to the social network to explain that the government had chosen to shut it down because of "un Islamic" content, adding that the country's government had tried contacting Twitter, but that it had not been of...